JS13k Again - Sopwith calls me back to 1984

Its js13k time again and for 2019 the theme is 'Back'.

For the uninitiated js13k is a game contest which requires that you create a game in 30 days that runs in a browser and all told is less than 13kb of code - a very small amount.

This year I would like to do a homage to a video game first released in 1984 - BMB released the incredible, immortal 'SOPWITH'. I was 11 years old at the time and 4 (yes four) colour 320x200 CGA monitors were cutting edge technology.

The game looked exactly like this:

I played it a lot. (here are a whole lot of videos if you want to see or remember)

So this year I would like to make a cover-version of Sopwith in 13kb showcasing the original brilliant game play and expressing the amazing changes in video and audio between 1984 and 2019.

That's the inspiration; I think the theme of 'back' is going work nicely with some of the ideas I have in mind. The game has quite a few different moving parts: lots of sprites side scrolling terrain; some physics for the planes; collision detection; sound and chiptunes and an AI player capable of fighting tactically. So every byte is going to count as I go.